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Early on this interview [0] he says that his grandfather visited Napoleon in Elba (in 1814). It's always sort of mind-blowing how few generations, albeit long-l

• deleted 6y ago
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• anaphor 6y ago
  I think this is one of the most fascinating things about him to me, because he was born in 1872 and lived to 1970, so he went from living in a society where it was still common to travel by horse and buggy to one where we had nuclear energy and easy air travel, etc, and he never lost his sharp mind, so you get to hear the perspective of someone who went through all of that. I highly recommend giving his autobiography a read to anyone interested in his life.
  • netcan 6y ago
    You don't need to have been very long lived to see that. My grandfather was born in 1914. Cars existed, but most people hadn't seen one yet. The Wright brothers' maiden flight was 10 years prior. He went to med school before WW2. Penicillin did not exist yet, not even in labs! In the 50s (his 40s), he traveled commercially on a 747... 1950s futurism predicting flying cars and moon cities by 2000... they weren't being as silly as we tend to think. They saw planes go from nonexistent sputnik within half a lifetime. The projection was linear.
    • ianai 6y ago
      The futurism probably could have stayed true if the political impetus had stayed toward space development instead of Cold War and oil concerns. But planting the US flag on the moon and probably other factors I don’t realize made the Soviets being on the moon less of a reality. Edit-really wish we had O'Neill cylinders though.
      • Amezarak 6y ago
        There's no guarantee that the futurism would have come true for the simple fact it doesn't seem likely that flying cars and moon cities are technically or economically feasible. There seems to be an unspoken assumption behind a lot of techno-futurism that everything we've dreamed up - flying cars, space colonies, starships - are possible simply because we dreamed them up, that everything we can imagine is possible. In reality, they may not be physically possible, or if possible, not desirable, or if desirable, not economically feasible. At any rate, the point is probably moot: the damage our obsession with technology and consumption has already caused is probably irreparable, and more techno-futurist dreams coming would have just accelerated it. We have been completely blind to the second-order effects of our industrial and technological development; climate change is only the tip of the iceberg.
      • netcan 6y ago
        I disagree, kinda. There are lots of possible reasons for progress, or lack thereof. Political will is the easy answer, but it's not always true... or the biggest factor. Space programs did get a ton of funding for the few short years of the moon race. Unsustainable funding really, given the gdp in 1965. But... they were still funded. NASA's budget is currently 2/3 of what it was in the 60s in constant dollars. Maybe they hit a plateau with the tech. Maybe it was the lack of Russian competition. Maybe it was the lack of a massive goal. Maybe organisations age, and get less creative over time. Maybe in the 60s NASA just hit a genius groove that happens occasionally but can't be sustained forever.
    • jdkee 6y ago
      Probably a 707. First flight of the 747 was in 1969. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747
• joe_the_user 6y ago
  Well, I think it's also telling that now Napoleon's reign could be thought of as "this weird short-lived French empire", because while it short-lived, the Napoleonic empire in many ways set the stage, created the model for the modern world. Certainly, Napoleon was defeated but the forces of France at that time represented a kind of progress, a kind of progress that other nations were only able to defeat by adopting - the mass army at the service of a centralized state implies a kind of democracy and mass participation in life that a feudal system couldn't manage (to name just one of enumerable example). That's why even in defeat, Napoleon represented a fundamental change in the world.
  • sndean 6y ago
    Oh yeah, no disrespect to Napoleon or France. I have Andrew Roberts' Napoleon in my reading queue for later during this quarantine. I just meant that it represents a very foreign era relative to now, though maybe I should think of it as the start of the current era based on your comment.
    • joe_the_user 6y ago
      Yes, My point is now the Napoleonic Empire can seem a weird little nook of history. Closer to the era, it cast a much larger shadow but things must pass.
  • BurningFrog 6y ago
    Yeah, you can think of the Napoleon Wars as "World War Zero", and Napoleon as the Hitler of his time. As you can maybe tell, the aspect of modernity where mass wars with millions of dead sweep the world because some dictator wants it, is not my favorite one. Still, you're not wrong!
    • Koshkin 6y ago
      I think Napoleon was more similar to Caesar than to Hitler, and that modern universal sense of disdain towards Hitler is a sign of progress.
• dddbbb 6y ago
  The oldest person in the world was born in 1903, before George Orwell, Frida Kahlo and Lyndon Johnson. It's genuinely hard to fathom.